The world’s governments and central banks are shifting from rescue to recovery mode as the deepest slump since the Great Depression shows signs of bottoming out.
After rolling out trillions of dollars worth of measures to prevent their economies and markets from collapsing, they are now doubling down with even more spending to backstop a recovery as coronavirus lockdowns ease. In what counts for good news these days, Bloomberg Economics’ global GDP growth tracker showed economies contracted at an annualized rate of 2.3 per cent in May, less than the 4.8-per-cent slump in April.
“Policy-makers are moving from triage to recovery,” said Deutsche Bank Securities Chief Economist Torsten Slok. “They are realizing that more fiscal support will be needed to households and small businesses to prevent this liquidity crisis from turning into a solvency crisis.”
The new wave of stimulus has both governments and central banks moving in sync to continue flooding lenders, markets and companies with cheap credit at an unprecedented pace.
The European Central Bank last week expanded its asset purchases by 600 billion euros (US$677 billion) to 1.35 trillion euros, and extended them until at least the end of June 2021. And Germany’s government agreed another 130 billion-euro fiscal stimulus push and said it will back a proposed new 750 billion-euro European Union recovery fund.
“Action had to be taken,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said in a press conference.
It’s a similar story in Asia.
Japan is planning another US$1.1 trillion worth of spending in its biggest splurge yet and the central bank in May called an emergency meeting to roll out 30 trillion yen (US$274 billion) of loan support for small businesses.
China last week unveiled another 3.6 trillion yuan (US$508 billion) in spending and South Korea’s 76 trillion won (US$63 billion) ‘New Deal’ fiscal package is its largest to date.
In the U.S., lawmakers continue to debate extra fiscal stimulus and the Federal Reserve, which meets on June 10, has just launched a new Main Street Lending Program, the latest in trillions of support it has already poured into the economy and markets.
While the Fed is unlikely to signal any moves when its officials gather this week, many economists expect it to harden its commitment to easy monetary policy later in the year and perhaps even start pursing a Japan-style campaign to control long-term borrowing rates.
The latest U.S. jobs numbers give some hope that the stimulus unleashed so far is beginning to kick in. A record 2.5 million workers were added by employers during May while unemployment declined to 13.3 per cent, wrong footing economists who had forecast widespread job losses.
To be sure, there’s far from consensus that the latest wave of support will be enough to get growth back to where it was at the start of the year. Some of the steps being taken are merely to replace existing policies as they start to expire.
“It seems clear already approved packages are perceived to be not enough,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis SA.
There are other concerns that monetary policy can only do so much to revive growth before it loses its potency.
“How does the Fed actually get money to millions and millions of households and small businesses, that is difficult to do operationally,” former New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley told Bloomberg Television.
“It’s much easier to intervene in the capital markets where the Fed can rely on counterparties, primary dealers and others,” Dudley said. “It is much more difficult to lend one by one to millions of different entities.”
Another risk is a return to austerity, even if it seems unlikely now. JPMorgan recently predicted a fiscal thrust of 3.3 per cent of GDP this year and 1.5 per cent drag next year.
U.S. senators have put the brakes on a US$3-trillion fiscal package that was approved by lower house lawmakers. China’s government has ruled out a return to the kind of large scale stimulus it rolled out after the global financial crisis, preferring to keep a lid on rising debt.
Still, because the crisis meant economies were forced into shutdown, much of the emergency response so far has been less about driving growth and more about avoiding total collapse. It’s that dynamic which is leaving governments with little option but to borrow harder.
“We shouldn’t look at the positive immediate growth impact of the opening up process as being the rate of growth that may last,” said David Mann, chief economist for Standard Chartered Plc.
Creating jobs will be mission critical to cementing any upswing. That will need support for firms to retrain employees, incentives to hire older workers and for governments to continue with wage subsidies. More than one in six people have stopped working since the onset of the crisis, according to the International Labour Organization, which in April estimated more than 1 billion workers were at high risk of a pay cut or losing their job.
“A faster job market recovery will speed up the economic healing and reduce the risk from widening income inequality and social stress,” said Chua Hak Bin, senior economist at Maybank Kim Eng Research Pte.
Ultimately, the rescue of economies will go well beyond quantitative solutions and into the realm of story telling too, as policy makers will need to inject confidence back into wary consumers and executives, said Stephen Jen, who runs hedge fund and advisory firm Eurizon SLJ Capital in London.
“Human psychology is the same and is now as important as the mechanics of delivering the fiscal stimuli themselves,” he said.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
